Specter: RINO no more

Good-bye and good riddance:

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning. . . .
"I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary," said Specter in a statement. "I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election."
He added: "Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans."

Exit lying. One less member of the Senate Republican "Jellyfish Caucus." Specter reminds me of the high-school slut trying to sleep her way to popularity -- a weak reed, blown by the shifting winds. The fact that the national GOP apparatus lined up behind this venomous crapweasel in 2004 is all you need to know about what a worthless waste of time the national GOP apparatus was during the Bush/Mehlman era.

Even if Specter wins the Democratic primary (which is certainly not a given) and wins the general election (also not a given), no one will ever respect him because he is dishonorable and untrustworthy. A pox upon him and his ilk. (Via Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: Via Jules Crittenden and Gateway Pundit, a statement from RNC Chairman Michael Steele:

Republicans look forward to beating Sen. Specter in 2010, assuming the Democrats don’t do it first.

At least Steele won't have to spend more time pandering to the politically irrelevant "Specter wing" of the GOP.

UPDATE II: Philip Klein of The American Spectator:

If Specter had made this party switch right after his vote in favor of the stimulus package, and before he decided to oppose card check, he would have been in a far better position to claim the Democratic nomination.

Klein links Markos at Daily Kos:

Interestingly, he remains a foe of EFCA, which means that labor is free to fund and help a real Democrat in the Democratic primary. Bizarre choice. Had he decided to back EFCA, as he has always done so in the past, he'd have labor's full support. Now, he gives the opposition an opening to take him out in the Democratic primary.

When you see Kos using the phrase "real Democrat," it means that the Nutroots will back a Ned Lamont-style challenge to Specter in the Democratic primary, a challenge that every conservative should encourage. The more bitter the Democratic primary, the more obscure and extreme Specter's primary opposition, the better for conservatives.

BTW, I disagree with Klein when he says this:

This is a huge blow for Republicans hoping to stop Obama's agenda in the Senate.

Specter is a "huge blow," in one sense of that term, but he was never a reliable vote for anything. He is one of those vain, unprincipled creatures -- like Robert Byrd or John McCain -- who revel in their self-created image of being a "public servant," an image that is merely an excuse for selfishness and dishonesty.

UPDATE III: Notice how the treacherous crapweasel, after describing himself proudly as a member of the "Reagan Big Tent," then pisses all over the Reagan legacy:

When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But, I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing.

If there is one thing that Reagan firmly stood for as firmly than his hatred of Communist tyrrany, it was his opposition to the Keynesian economic hokum that led to Carter-era "stagflation." If you don't understand why the bailout-and-stimulus idiocy of Obamanomics is bad policy -- It Won't Work -- you need to be reading Hayek and Mises.

UPDATE IV: Matt Welch of Reason:

By choosing to die on the hill of the stimulus package of all things, Specter reinforces whatever notion there is that stimuli and bailouts are Democratic, not Republican, pet toys. Since professional Republicans are currently scattered in the wind, trying desperately to latch onto the anti-stimulus/bailout Tea Party movement, cementing that divide may come back to haunt Democrats when those policies (inevitably, I think) become so derided that even Barack Obama's impressive popularity can't rescue them.

Hear! Hear! And the heroic Club For Growth:

Senator Specter has confirmed what we already knew – he's a liberal devoted to more spending, more bailouts, and less economic freedom.

The Club For Growth is "heroic," I say, because their support for Republican conservative Pat Toomey was what finally forced Specter to admit that he is a Democrat. As I said at The American Spectator:

Specter will be less useful to the Democrats now than he ever was when he had an "R" beside his name.

He was certainly never useful to Republicans. All things considered, swine flu has never been a greater threat to America than RINO fever.

UPDATE V: Michelle Malkin reminds us of Specter's habitual dishonesty, when he vowed just six weeks ago that he would not switch parties.

UPDATE VI: Some commenter just suggested that, in celebrating the RINO's departure, conservatives like myself were "purging" Sphincter. Nonsense. He purged himself. After years of zealously advancing the Democratic agenda with an "R" beside his name, he's now joined Jumpin' Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee in the Formerly Useful Idiot Coalition.